U.N. Security Council condemns Syria over massacre

Demonstrators on Sunday protest in front of the Syrian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Demonstrators on Sunday protest in front of the Syrian consulate in...

BEIRUT - The U.N. Security Council on Sunday unanimously condemned the Syrian government for its role in the massacre of at least 108 people in Houla over the weekend, even as Syria blamed others for the killing.

The U.N. action was the strongest yet allowed by Russia, a permanent Security Council member that has blocked many attempts to criticize the government of President Bashar Assad, its close ally.

"We unequivocally deny the responsibility of government forces for the massacre," Jihad Makdissi, the spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference in Damascus, the capital. He reiterated the standard government line that the deaths were caused by a terrorist attack, and he said he regretted that the United Nations and other governments seemed to have accepted the opposition's version of events.

In some of the worst carnage since the uprising began 15 months ago, Syrian tanks and artillery pounded Houla, a rebel-controlled village near Homs, a center of the resistance, on Friday and Saturday, opposition groups said, with soldiers and pro-government fighters storming the village and killing families in their homes late at night. Included in the death toll, which rose Sunday afternoon, were at least 32 children.

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At the U.N. security council meeting, Russia initially blocked a collective statement condemning the Syrian government, diplomats said Sunday, and demanded a closed briefing from Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission, on assigning blame.

Four council members - the United States, Germany, France and Britain - had prepared a draft statement condemning the Syrian military for battering civilian neighborhoods with tank shells, using language that echoed two previous U.N. statements.

The secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon issued a joint statement with Kofi Annan, his envoy. Annan is scheduled to be in the Syrian capital for talks on Monday.

But Russia said it wanted to hear directly from Mood because the question of who carried out the massacre was not clear, the diplomats said.

Makdissi said the army did not send tanks into Houla and that security forces did not leave their positions but had remained in a defensive posture. Instead, he said, hundreds of gunmen armed with machine guns, mortars and antitank missiles began attacking government positions in a skirmish that lasted much of the day and well into the night. Three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded, he said.

In saying that tanks did not enter Houla, Makdissi seemed to avoid the thrust of the accusations made by the United Nations that the government had indiscriminately shelled civilian neighborhoods.

After monitors visited the village on Saturday, counting at least 92 bodies, they said they found spent tank shells, which they cited as evidence that the Syrian military had violated its part of a truce in firing heavy artillery.